Building and sustaining inquiry communities in mathematics teaching development: teachers and didacticians in collaboration

Teachers and didacticians both bring areas of expertise, forms of knowing and relevant experience to collaboration in mathematics teaching development. The notion of inquiry community, provides a theoretical and practical foundation for development. Within an inquiry community all participants are researchers (taking a broad definition). With reference to a research and development project in Norway (Learning Communities in Mathematics – LCM) this chapter explains the theoretical notions, discusses how one community was conceived and emerged in practice and addresses the issues contingent on emergence and sustaining of inquiry practices. In doing so it provides examples of collaborative activity and the reciprocal forms of expertise, knowing and experience that have contributed to community building. It illuminates issues and tensions that have been central to the developmental process and shows how an activity theory analysis can help to navigate the complexity in characterizing development.